Randell Jones
Daniel Boone Footsteps
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6-minute Stories

Everybody loves a good story
Listen to these 6-minute stories
from both new voices and experienced writers
from the Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies:
Bearing Up , Exploring , That Southern Thing , Luck & Opportunity,
Trouble , Curious Stuff , Twists and Turns , Sooner or Later , and Now or Never.
Copies of all 10 books in the series available here.
“6-minute Stories” episodes announced on Facebook @6minutestories

"Going for the Gold" by Thomas Gery

 – “I can do that.”  

The words “stress,” “pressure,” “anxiety” appear on page after page.

 

Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon experiences lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work life of 40 years. Married with two adult children and two grandchildren, he is currently writing his life’s story to provide answers to questions his kids will never ask. His earliest published stories have appeared in Personal Story Publishing Project—Lost & Found, Sooner or Later, Now or Never, Foolhardy. 

Author’s Talk

Thomas Gery

This fifth PSPP essay builds on my mission to provide answers to questions my two kids will never ask. The story describes a period in my life when I made a major occupational change, took financial risks and uprooted familial life by moving the household. Any one exchange of known reliability for the unknown new and different is stressful. Simultaneously putting self and family on three uncharted courses created a black cloud of worry. In the end I realized expectations can be greater than realization. During the storm my wife was a steady First Mate. Our son and daughter, young and oblivious, could not understand their dad’s misstep, flop and rebound. Now they are old enough to take a lesson and young enough to benefit from it. The time worn adage, “All’s well that ends well” applies.  

During my common-man’s life I have had many unusual experiences worth describing. Being in the twilight period of existence, with more concrete memories than productive imaginings, it is important I make my story available to the family. I wish the generations before me had done it.  

I am prodded to urgency by the mysteries of time’s quantity and quality. Robert Christgau, a renown critique, wrote in his review of an album: “I know it is hard to get a grip on kids, but people keep getting older. They don’t just reach some inconceivable benchmark—50 or, God, 60—and stop, Old in some absolute sense. The bones, the joints, the genitals, the juices, the delivery systems and eventually the mind continue to break down, at an unpredictable pace in unpredictable ways.” Going for the Gold is part of my mission; time is critical. - Thomas Gery

Randell Jones